When people think of trucks and trucking companies, they usually jump to the more negative aspects of trucks. After all, the times when people see trucks most often are on streets and highways. The result is that all the regular civilians tend only to think of how annoying they are to try to pass! There are a number of other complaints that people have about trucks on the road, but this is usually the first that comes to mind. Indeed, this is usually the only times that people really ever think about trucks.The amount of time they spend thinking about trucking companies is pretty well slim to none. The amount of time they spend thinking about what might be inside the truck is zero.

People can relate to the annoyances of trucks on the highway, but they never really think about just how important trucking companies and those trucks are to today’s world. The average person is used to getting up everyday, going to work, going home, and then going to bed, but they never realize that just about everything around them was brought to them thanks to a trucking company.

That’s right, they’re far more important to our daily lives then most people think. On a typical morning, a person gets up and usually heads for the shower. They don’t pause to think that the shaving cream they’re using, the razor blades, soap, and shampoo got to the pharmacy they shop at somehow. Yes, it was by truck which was sent there by a trucking company. Even people who order their toiletries online usually have that delivery involve a truck on at least one part of its journey and usually by several!

Out of the shower and into the kitchen means having that favorite cup of coffee. The very mug it’s put in and the coffee beans used to make that cuppa joe all arrived at their respective stores where they were purchased via trucks, again thanks to the contracts and the deft organization of trucking companies.

If this seems like this average day is starting to develop a theme, that’s because it is! And, it doesn’t end there. When a person gets into their car, they think of it as their way to work and home. They might even have a daydream of driving in it to Florida or California during the summer for a great road trip, but that car they purchased at the local dealership wasn’t manufactured on site. It was made in a different part of the country and then put on one of many trucks that deliver them to car dealerships across the nation.

When a person arrives at work, virtually all the equipment and supplies around them were shipped there through trucking companies. The food that they eat at home arrived at their supermarket by truck, the furniture they use arrived by way of a trucking company… and the list goes on and on!

So, trucks are important to the average person’s daily life in many different ways, but the world has more than just people in it. What about businesses? They are just as reliant on trucking companies as the regular person is, perhaps even more so. Businesses are the ones that rely on the average consumer to buy their goods and they have to get them out of the door and to those local people somehow.

And so, trucks and trucking companies come in again. Many businesses aren’t large enough to support their own fleet of trucks and need someone to transport their goods for them. Others that are large enough to have a fleet of trucks are usually not interested in creating an entirely new department to transport their goods. Creating a fleet of trucks for a company involves a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of administration. Much of the time, simply hiring a trucking company is easier than creating one!

Even goods transported by ships and planes eventually have to reach their destination at a harbor or an airport. From there, they can go no further and trucks are required to bring those products the last steps of the journey to the local department store, furniture store, or supermarket.

In the end, many people only see that truck in front of them as something slowing down their journey to their destination, but perhaps people should not think so much about how slow the truck is going in their minds. Perhaps, it’s not such a bad idea to imagine what that truck is transporting, where, and just what it might mean to someone out there.

Something in that truck just might end up bringing a smile to someone’s face, and that just might make having to go a little slower on the highway worth it.

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Augusta Free Press launched in 2002. The site serves as a portal into life in the Shenandoah Valley and Central Virginia – in a region encompassing Augusta County, Albemarle County and Nelson County and the cities of Charlottesville, Staunton and Waynesboro, at the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Skyline Drive, Shenandoah National Park and the Appalachian Trail.